


And Love, Too, Will Ruin Us

by ergo_existence



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 14:54:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4309512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ergo_existence/pseuds/ergo_existence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wash and Locus; Locus and Wash; Wash and Tucker and Locus and Felix.<br/>He always said they were alike. Soldier to soldier, man to man. One and one and two and two.<br/>One similarity runs, unfortunately, deeper than Wash deigns to expect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Love, Too, Will Ruin Us

**Author's Note:**

> It has been a while and I apologise. I have had some severe personal (mental illness) difficulties, but I am happy to be here, finally. I apologise, again, and I hope you take this as a means of apology.  
> I will continue to work on Batteries Feel Included, once I have some more time in the coming weeks. Thank you. I hope you enjoy this.
> 
> Felix/Locus is more implied than the reader may like; this will, possibly, be a two-parter, featuring a portion of Locus' side of the story; alternately I will connect it to another fic of mine which is Ode to Felix, revamped, if you remember that darling I wrote.

Agent Washington knows the power of a trip and fall; dangling off a cliff, he knows the petrifying danger, the knowledge that slipping would be very easy and that dying would be, too—but the adrenaline that comes along with it momentarily makes it all better. He’s learnt that adrenaline makes you do things you never thought you could do, and the same of fear: fear was nothing to fear. Fear got him where he is.

(He wonders whether that’s a good thing or not, but then again, he’s _alive,_ and he hopes, when all his good and bad deeds are tallied at his death, the means justify the ends).

Falling in love, of course, was not quite his enemy as precipices and cars were. He lets out a breath at that; love, falling in love, tripping, grazing his knees and letting his armour clang.

The idiom, of course, he doesn’t know the origin of. Who _coined_ it?

Agent Washington also recognises that falls, as it were, are not always romantic and giddy and about landing into tall grass. They are hard and they hurt and sometimes, nobody catches you, not even your own hands.

He debates it often.

When he first sees Allison, he thinks about love, love as an idea, an obsession, every memory coated by _them_ and every memory piercing as the next.

Then the painkillers set in, and it all becomes like a fever dream, and his mind quietly says that that’s all it ever was; a mania, a slip—

It’s all closed off, bright yellow tape like in all those old buddy-cop movies that York was _obsessed_ with. And sure, it’s dramatic. Wash didn’t almost go to acting school for _nothing_.

(It’s a throwaway line in his head, a joke, a _this almost happened_ and he laughs at it, usually, but also quietly: what if he went there, lights and sweat and breath heavy and deep and lines memorised; what if he just went to school, only school, didn’t step up for the army because he was desperate and running running running?

What from, he didn’t know, not then, and he’s still not sure now).

*

He thinks about the rough-softness of his fingers a lot. How when, un-gloved and stretched out, they look young and healthy and fresh. Calluses on his right middle finger, his index (both), a bit of a kink in the line of pinky finger (broken, once, and not healed properly. It wasn’t in combat, and he set it himself). Freckles and sunspots all over. A conglomeration of dots. Sometimes, he’s mad that his body—scars and all—doesn’t represent his mind with all its dark corridors and closets and doors that won’t open and some that won’t shut. That when he takes off his helmet he still looks twenty-five—he wonders if maybe there was some anti-ageing properties to Project, what else was kept secret, trying to make him _eternally young_ to just fuck him up more—

That was a conspiracy theory, of course, but there’s not much he can put past the Director, not anymore.

His eyes are tired. (There’s a mirror in Dr. Grey’s office, where he inspects the bloody bandages on the back of his neck, listens to the doctor rant and rave about the latest designs in prosthetic limbs, and how it’s a shame she can’t experiment with them, and he figures out that for everything she’s been through, this is her way of coping).

But after staring at the suitcases under his eyes, and the freckle that has annoyed him for _years_ —right on the edge of his left eyebrow, where there’s a small patch of untouched skin, bar for this _one fucking freckle_ —he knows he’s young, and Dr. Grey loosely remarks upon it. She wants to know what cream he uses, she says. She wants to know how he _does_ it.

Wash is pretty sure it’s a mixture of no sleep for at least a decade. But then he never had acne when he was a teenager, so maybe he’s just generally an anomaly. Nothing surprises him, ever. Well.

Not true.

(This is where there’s a cut to him scolding Tucker, who is supposed to—and has—surprised him; this is where there’s a cut to him watching in ardent admiration of the Reds and Blues and their bumbling ways—a soft part of him, the part that houses the indomitable urge to continue and live, says that he is not an outlier—

Life was not a movie.

Life was objective. Wash, by all merits, did not believe in God, had no space for a deity, and replacing _God_ with _the universe’s will_ was just a useless agnostic way of blaming some cosmic entity for struggle. Wash had learnt that with tumbles and falls, death and all, some things just happened, and he could never explain why, but he knew—on good days—it was usually because humans could be quite good, could be quite terrible, and he was one of them).

What happens is, for all the morose wondering, he has a split-second moment where he devises a very clever plan and distracts Locus with a floating helmet and, he is sure, Lopez would be momentarily proud, if he could ever be proud, and if he didn’t find it more of a mockery than a homage.

Wash has a bad habit of thinking about the Big Things whilst he’s in a pickle. He’s had some of his best epiphanies on the field.

This particular epiphany, of course, is more about him realising where _he_ sits and where Tucker is, and whether Tucker will have quite the same luck as he, and how they’d probably die—cliché, a TV trope 101—before he’d even tell Tucker that, for all the disparate grey and continual muddy green, he’d had a nice trip and it wasn’t even weed, it was a humble fall for a boy who was not even a boy anymore.

*

Wash has three weaknesses.

Cliffs, cars, and the third of which he will get to. And do eventually.

Wash also makes the mistake of revealing this to his worst enemy. (There is something funny about that to him. He’s awarded Locus the title of Worst Enemy and, in a distant corner of his mind, this is _awarding_ importance he shouldn’t; the rest of his head says fuck it).

“I would be _concerned_ …about the state your men will be in,” Locus says, voice drifting with its low bass, intonation of a subtle threat beneath it. The scene is vivid and if a camera were present, it would be typical; snow is drifting, lazily indignant about the direction it blew in (i.e. right into Wash’s visor), and the horizon is misty, the water swaying, and they have a perfect view of the entirety of the Fed base; of course Wash would drift to the perimeter and Locus, too.

“You have no sense of introduction. Shouldn’t you have a theme song?” Wash retorts, not bothering to give any weight to a proper reply. Incrementally he raises his rifle, rubs his middle finger twice for good luck.

He also has distinct, somewhat terrifying, visions of the Reds and their warthog, and the tune they played when they went to war. For a moment he wishes Grif and Simmons would ride in on their stallion, but life was not a fairytale.

Locus grunts and Wash resumes scanning the layout of the Fed base. It’s not interesting and his mind refuses to settle itself, but it does him good. Even if Locus stood three feet away from him. He waged the odds, and it was likely Locus wouldn’t shoot him. Likely. So he turns a bit and keeps Locus in his peripheral vision.

“So what gives for coming in and commenting about my _men_?” The only reason he poses this question is because Locus’ gaze is not _unseeing_ , it is simply not there. And that makes him uncomfortable.

“I am curious, Agent Washington, as to how you figure you shall rescue them.”

Wash figures he’s playing the role of Ominous Villain, and it’s like he’s reading out of a book. _I am curious, Agent Washington_ …

So he snorts, if a little harshly, and says, “I don’t think it should be a priority of yours. Don’t you have a civil war to win?”

“I do. And you have intricately webbed yourself into Chorus and its problematic state, by merit making your division my _priority_.”

“I think to begin with you and _your_ soldiers came in and attacked _my_ men, _and_ you knocked me out blind. At this stage I don’t think you have our best intentions at _heart_.” It takes everything in Wash not to raise his voice. He’s known delicate people who liked to anger him and hear his voice jump an octave, and Locus is not delicate, and he does not doubt one of Locus’ goals is to set Wash off. “So how about you leave it, and you go—go and, I don’t know, I assume you sit in dark corners and ruminate on your next plot?”

He’s slightly peeved at the image, mostly because he does it quite often himself.

But he’s not Locus.

“No.”

The short answer is not what Wash expected.

“No, Agent Washington,” Locus continues, his then-lowered sniper rifle now raised, gliding over the base, “I want to know why you so badly want your men back.”

“You call them _my men._ Which surely means you know what _men_ can mean to a—a leader—” He’s unsure whether to use the term _leader_ to describe himself, but he does, “—which is excluding the fact that there also could be women on a team, or variations thereupon.” He coughs, once. “So, _Locus_. Tell me. What do your men mean to _you_?”

Deflect. That’s what he learnt to do in Project Freelancer. Works every time.

“They are soldiers and do as they’re told,” Locus responds, simply, but Wash detects something rising behind.

He also wants to know where the Little Book of Ominous Sayings is tucked away, if perhaps Locus has memorised the whole thing.

“But that must _mean_ something to you. You need them—to what, act as meatsacks? Deterrents? Whether you have an emotional tie doesn’t matter. You _want_ them.”

A disappointed grunt escapes Locus and for once, Wash is sure he has him cornered.

“I don’t think my friends are coverage.” He breathes deeply and completely lowers his gun, and maybe for a moment he wonders if this little epiphany is not just for himself, or to make a point, if maybe he hopes on one level—a distant good level that North always wanted to inspire—that Locus could understand what else _my men_ could mean.

And, in particular, what the singular of that phrase could sound like. _My man_.

For a moment he spots aqua in the distance, and he hums.

“And what happens to you, Agent Washington, when your men begin to mean more to you than you could fathom or help?”

Wash lets out a happily surprised but also exasperated sigh, in some small way slipping into a familiar argumentative pattern. “You need to get something off your chest?”

“Stop answering my questions with questions.” Were anybody else to say it, it would be a friendly scolding; instead it is threatening and demeaning and so very Locus-like. But Wash still has to laugh.

“Then I’d have all the more reason to protect them.”

There is no glimmer of telling what Locus’ expression could be but Wash is fearful there is a poisonous half-tilt of a smile.

“So this has happened to you, considering your fervent anger at the separation?”

“You are _not_ analysing my intentions like this.”

“You are deflecting.”

Wash is prepared to walk off, right then and there, but if he _does_ that’s an affirmative. And he has a sick feeling in his throat that once Locus—now on the trail—figures out there is _somebody_ that is like light and rest, well, Wash is very, very scared of what could happen.

Wash is not often very, very scared.

“Who, then, are you so endeavoured to…rescue? The knight on his way to rescue the princess.”

“The line of questioning can stop there.”

“I assume it’s neither the Red leader, nor the maroon deputy with an inferiority complex—” _Locus was one to talk about complexes!_ “—I would wager, Agent Washington, that you are seeking Lavernius Tucker.” He doesn’t spit Tucker’s name out, or say it sharply, instead it’s with a disinterested tang that gets on Wash’s nerves like no other. Tucker was _more_.

“Don’t say his name like that.”

“You are an interesting puzzle,” Locus says, without missing a beat, in tune with their established routine.

“ _Try me_.”

“Precisely what I intend to do.”

Wash’s third weakness was discovered, and he feels naked, but that urge continues; _rage, rage against the dying of the light_.

“You and I are, as it goes, Agent Washington, more alike than you care to think.”

*

“I don’t want to do this,” he says to himself, aloud. His quarters are bright purple—one of Dr. Grey’s hobbies is interior decorating, and she ‘spruced up’ some of the soldier’s living spaces for ‘morale’ (all Wash feels are distant memories of North’s gaudy Christmas party outfits, and general day outfits). There is not a stretch of grey.

“Well done, Wash. Now he’s gone and you have to quantify what you _feel,_ ” he goes on, hands clawing at hair, not pacing but sitting motionless on his unusually bouncy bed. He tests it.

So he goes on a long, ten minute rant to himself. It’s consoling. And the paranoia sets in—he knows Locus is going to target Tucker. He knows this is going to happen. He knows. He knows many things.

He’s waiting for Locus to figure out the other two weaknesses, but at this point, the third is bad enough. So he yells into the night, yells at the fact that from the start they were all separated, and God, it wasn’t until he had them taken away from him he realised how much, as a cohesive unit, they all meant to him.

And how many more times they might leave him. And one day, it might even be a choice. He closes up in a hole of anxiety and—

The door to his room retracts and lets a cold breeze through from the corridors, and he realises life was no fairytale until the doctor comes to call for her evening visit.

Also, he’s wearing nothing but underpants he had to borrow from Sarge, and ultimately he feels quite the fool.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine!” Dr. Grey exclaims, door whisking shut behind her, helmet thrusted off. “ _Might_ be more personal if I’m not staring at you through a big funny helmet. Come on, Agent Washington.”

She takes both his hands.

*

If Wash were to play his life back, it’d be done in a nonlinear order. There’d be meditating, and thinking and drama; a dash or two of realism; some dramatic landscape swoops; and it would vary between his childhood (of spaceball and melted marshmallows and bad haircuts that he gave himself) and his adult life, the stark difference between the two. In particular it would focus on the cynicism, as a theme, that dominated him. He read books and never understood how love could be such a cataclysm, dextrous and sinister.

He starts to wonder what Locus’ weaknesses are, if for all his attempts at comparison and sympathy and so _on_ and so _fucking forth_ , there was a deeper line that ran.

Locus, the glistening idea of a soldier with no mind; Wash, the soldier, the real-raw soldier; Wash, who’d gone rogue; Locus, who was an amoral rogue through and through.

Wash, who accidentally made a blunder and fell in love and saw unreality and reality and how it twisted and turned.

His head slightly raises as the thought occurs to him, and he returns back to ordering Palomo to do a lap of the perimeter of the Armonia base with the other lieutenants.

He has to go see Kimball. So he does. He wishes it could be a clean transition between him, standing there, voice barking, to leaning across Kimball’s desk in her office opposite Doyle’s. Alas he has to power-walk through several corridors and one tube, and avoid Donut’s advances.

There’s no wish on his part, however, to interrupt a meeting between Doyle and Kimball; that would be, at this point, too over-the-top for his tastes. Thankfully, gracefully, she sits calmly shuffling through clearly important-looking papers. Distantly he’d hoped to find her doing something non-work related, to maybe prove she ever had a minute to herself. He’d be interrupting that, though.

The light in the room is warm and amber, an iridescent light that soothes him, somewhat.

“Kimball,” he greets her steadily, without preamble.

“Agent Washington. A pleasure.”

“Of course,” he says, taking the room in a stride and seating himself with care, attempting not to look too imposing, trying to fit in a bit. “I have…some news. I think it’s news. It’s more speculation than anything, to be fair.”

“How about you just try and tell me, and we see how we go,” Kimball says, ever so diplomatically, resting her hands on the edge of the surface.

“Well, you know of Locus and I’s—particular _antagonism_ ,” he starts, tripping over words a moment, realising what he’ll have to admit to be able to gain this upperhand. She nods and he continues, “I believe I may have figured out an important part to our puzzle.”

“And that would be?”

“Locus’ weak-spot. A place we could target.” He swallows when she says nothing, and he knows that he could be wasting her time, but sand is sand. “Locus has a particular _knack_ for comparing himself to me, me to him; he is a soldier and I’m a soldier, or I should be, he is the way he is, and one time—for a brief period—” He stops and sighs. Bites the bullet, so to speak. “—I was like him.”

He taps his fingers on the table.

“He also figured out something about _me_ …and left somewhat of a hint there.”

“Agent Washington, please go on.”

“He figured out—” Wash sighs again and slams a fist on knee, not with much pressure but rather defeat. “He figured out I loved somebody. And he said we were more alike than I thought.” He looks at Kimball’s blue visor and realises he hasn’t revealed enough, not for it to make sense. “He figured out I loved _Tucker_. After questioning me about my men. What they mean to me. It was before we knew who Felix really was.”

“Are you implying what I think you are?” She says it almost incredulously, and not doubtfully. Wash has confidence in his tone, next.

“That Felix and Locus are closer than we have been led to believe? Yes. Yes, I am. Which means we need to divide and conquer.”

“Explains Tucker’s state when you were separated,” she muses. “But they managed to remain separate for _years_ , between the Rebels and Federal Army. What does this mean for us?”

“Right now they _need_ to be together—Carolina and I fought against them, at the radio tower, and I _know_ how they work. It makes _sense_. More than I thought it would.” He pauses, then adds, “And what do you mean it explains Tucker’s state when we were separated?”

“I’ll leave that up to you. And if this theory holds any weight, then perhaps we may have an effective strategy to at least _consider_. More than raiding their bases.”

Wash breathes and tries to avoid thinking too hard, for a few seconds, now that he’s shared this information with Kimball. Laid himself bare. It was foolish, in hindsight, but anything for war.

He waits for the insistent lean-across-the-table from Kimball, a quiet cutting tone, _don’t let_ this _get in the way_ , but he thinks there’s wry smile sitting in there and god, she knows about what the Greeks said, doesn’t she? Not just Plato or Aristotle, but the adage about men in love on the battlefield were more powerful than any.

Perhaps Locus knew that, too.

She interrupts his thoughts, and answers them: “I saw the glint in Tucker’s eye more than one time. He’s determined.” Her head flicks back down to the paperwork. “People like him are good. And important.”

“Tell me about it.”

He hopes that that’s the end of their conversation, ending on a sombre agreement, but Kimball tightly adds, “You stay here, though. You don’t go with Tucker. You have to train _our_ men.”

Wash sighs.

*

_All that time we were with the Feds, I knew you were watching me, making sure I wasn't a threat. Which was why I took the time to watch you. You know, you might see our similarities, Locus. But you still can't see that between the two of us, that I'm the soldier, and you're just a killer._

The words feel good and strong, and he’s in motion, which is always a plus—Wash gets antsy when he’s still for too long, even if the best Agent of the Project was able to stand still for twelve hours.

That didn’t matter.

He adds, on the end of his somewhat self-righteous speech, “And you can’t really be as emotionless as you like to pride yourself on. We’re similar. Sure.

You’re in _love_. So think about all that murder. Maybe think about Felix, if you aren’t already doing that.”

He hopes to hear a growl, but all that comes is silence. The opportunity to halve the pair never arose, and instead the opposite happened—he was separated from Tucker—but he, at least, took the petty chance to press Locus’ buttons.

*

He counts. Onetwothree. Cars and cliffs and Lavernius Tucker. He bumps into the first two more frequently than he likes, and he’s been away from the third more than he is fond of. The absence, he has found, has not desensitised him; rather quite the opposite. Tucker took on a glowing visage in his mind.

“So…how are you, dude?”

“That’s a smooth introduction. What _is_ it with people and coming up behind me?” Wash says, turning around on his little camp stretcher. Everything is copper or blue or copper _and_ blue, or rusting steel, and in all honesty it’s his favourite middle-ground between drab grey and holographic blue, and bright fucking purple.

“You’ll know when I come up behind you, Wash,” Tucker says, real and earthly, and Wash looks at the carving of his cheeks, the tapering from his shoulders to his hips, the slight jut of his jaw. He thinks of all the ways he, Wash, could’ve died, and missed this. Missed it for even a moment.

“ _Tucker_ , really? That’s the best you’ve got? I thought of at _least_ four other remarks.”

“All involving butt-stuff, though, so it’s kinda moot.”

“Take a seat.”

“I’ve been invited to the royal quarters, have I?”

“These are _our_ quarters. There’s no—oh, for the love of _god._ ”

Wash never expected, for all the fallings he’s taken, to land so softly. Nor did he expect a gentle smile to ease his way onto his face without even trying.

“We were pretty badass out there. I mean, like, we _sucked,_ we always do, but hell fuckin’ yeah. Scared those babies off.”

“You’re forgetting the part where Felix got away with the key. And Church is lying about what’s really going on.”

Tucker sits harshly on Wash’s bed and Wash, for a moment, wonders how romanticised he had made Tucker; if this fall was soft in his head because of camera lights and big monologues.

The scrunched-up nose is more endearing than he likes to believe, though. “Church is _always_ a lying asshole. So there’s probably less wrong there than you think.”

“He seems to be going through denial at this point…” Wash trails off and raises a hand, and counts off, one by one: “Kübler-Ross model, isn’t it? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.”

“Why the fuck would Church be going through that?”

“Death.”

“Whose funeral?”

Wash purses his lips and swallows in the look of Tucker’s face: quizzical, questioning, but trusting. Wash finds it funny.

“His own, I would suppose.”

“Bullshit. Church can’t die.”

“He already has.” He’s not sure why he does it, if for support or comfort on Tucker’s part or just his own, _contact, contact_. “I’ve never been witness to an AI failing, but one of the Director’s contemporaries—also subject to moral criticism—theorised, and founded, that the maximum AI lifespan is 7 years. Then they go through rampancy.”

“Rampancy? They fuckin’ lose it?” Tucker scoots closer to Wash and their thighs press together, Wash’s arm relaxing loosely behind him on the bed.

“So it goes.”

“And how old do you think Church is?” His face reveals it all, and they sit, in silence. He feels the movement before he sees it, eyes snapped away from Tucker—then Tucker’s head is resting on Wash’s shoulder.

“I have a theory,” Wash begins into a settled quiet, “that Locus isn’t just an imposing monster.”

“Ahuh. Tell me about the big bad wolf.”

“He’s in love.”

“Is he,” Tucker says, nose then pressing into Wash’s collarbone, and he could almost swear Tucker was falling asleep.

So Wash begins to ramble, and ramble, about the peculiar relationship he had with Locus, Locus, _Locus_. Words of acknowledgement encourage him, and he figures if any trope he’s been blessed with, it’s having a great love falling asleep in his arms and he thinks, sleepily himself, he may as well go ahead.

“See, he figured out I loved you. And it’s funny. Because he said we were _alike_. And I theorise that he loves Felix. It’s mad…a mad theory, but I suppose so is loving you. Stranger things have happened.”

A sad press to his chest tells him he’s dug himself in a hole, or Tucker’s asleep and it doesn’t matter. He rolls this thought around on his tongue, a cloying flavour.

“If we’re going with that symmetry, Wash,” Tucker says, turning his head so his mouth wasn’t muffled, “then Felix must be _buttfuck deep_ in love with Locus. Seems more like a parallel you’d find in a movie.”

“Exactly what I thought—it’s like Locus is playing a _part_ —hold on. Tucker?” He incredulously looks down into Tucker’s messy, messy corkscrew curls, splayed everywhere. “What do you mean, Felix—that symmetry—”

Wash wants to draw it out. Savour it and stretch it like hot candy. Could he hear music swelling? Golden light?

Well, there was light; a lot of it, _I want to rest in your light_ , but there were no bells tolling or running together in a field. But.

He had landed.

“I almost went to acting school, you know,” Wash says, almost like he’s bragging at a dinner party. “Little known fact.”

“Jesus. Say no fucking more.”

“ _Hey!_ ” he says, almost indignantly, but more playfully than anything. “I wasn’t going to Broadway or anything. I was just aimless.”

“You have natural talent. Makes sense.”

“But this isn’t acting. Before you think it is.”

Tucker snorts and grins and grins wide, his left hand catching Wash’s right, his thumb rubbing over all his knobbly knuckles and bruised, raised-up skin.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, as always. xoxo


End file.
